Brand duplicity happens when brand promises don’t align to customer or employee experience. There are five top factors that contribute to this misalignment.

1. Customer service – the B2C space spends fortunes on ensuring the best possible customer service, but B2B often misses the mark. It shouldn’t.
2. Leadership – leaders that don’t live up to a brand’s promise give their teams permission not to as well. The result: a duplicitous brand experience.
3. Communication – inconsistent messaging, internally and externally, leave clients and employees confused about what the organisation really stands for.
4. Short-term thinking – reacting to market circumstances in the name of meeting quarterly financial targets without actively aligning with a longer-term positioning strategy puts businesses at risk of losing their identity.
5. Strategy without culture – the saying goes that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and even the best-laid strategy can result in brand duplicity when it ignores the culture behind that brand.

Carefully aligning these five things with an organisation’s company culture will lead to an authentic brand experience for customers and clients.